


Watching Crane

by ljs



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 18:05:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon-compliant; any time between 1.03 and 1.07.</p>
<p>
  <i>Abbie catches Crane fondling books all the time.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching Crane

Abbie catches Crane fondling books all the time.

Usually it’s down in the archive room, which Captain Irving has taken to calling “The Batcave,” dryly and with a curl of the lip which could be amusement or a sneer. She even calls it that to herself sometimes, and remembers movie night before Mom went wrong and gone, tucked up with Jenny on the couch with popcorn and grape soda while they watched Danny DeVito cackle his way through the sewers. But to Crane, she knows, it’s a safe space. He understands books. He loves books.

He’ll pick up a large volume, could be town history, could be Corbin’s demon lore, whatever, and he’ll start muttering to himself, “So interesting that this is a folio – calf-bound, yes, but the paper does not appear to be particularly fine.” Then he’ll drift his fingers elegantly over the page-edges. “Ascertaining that the leaves are cut,” he said the first time she caught him, “it might be of some import to know if the work has been read.”

Yeah, right. He can talk about it like it’s work all day and half the night, Abbie thinks, but it’s for damn sure that for Crane, playing with books is pleasure.

Even in the hardest moments, she finds her own flashes of pleasure in watching his long fingers touch so delicately, so thoroughly, as if to take in information through his fingertips even before he reads. She doesn’t allow herself to identify her pleasure or follow the thought through. She can’t let herself do that.

But she watches him even when he doesn’t know she’s watching. That much she allows herself. She's a damn Witness, isn't she? 

When he looks up at her and realizes she’s watching, he always startles. Sometimes there’s a flush along those high cheekbones. Sometimes he bites his lips (so rosy, she thinks, a pretty contrast to his brown beard). Sometimes he pushes back that lock of hair that’s always falling over his face, and says quietly, “Lieutenant?”

And she always smiles at him. That much she allows herself, too.


End file.
